malacca trip

Always so belated. It's the 24th today, and I'm reporting on something that happened more than a week ago.

Last last weekend, trip to Malacca. With maternal relatives. 2 days: car ride, food, shopping, hotel, nothing else.

It was practically the same old itinerary; the food was practically the same as the other time we'd been there.

Deviation from norm:
1st night's dinner: seafood.
next morning's breakfast: dim sum.
Different hotel.
Different car :)

I loved it. We should switch from explore mode to sit-back-and-relax mode once in a while. There's nothing wrong in sticking to one's old ways. Let the pictures do the explanation.












Cat in a restaurant. Cute, but it casted serious doubts about the safety standards of the said restaurant and periphery.













Malacca's a UNESCO World Heritage City (starting from this July)!













Car ride to Malacca.

close-up on blemishes.

Implicit Association Test (IAT)

To save the trouble:

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is an experimental method within social psychology designed to measure the strength of automatic association between mental representations of objects (concepts) in memory. The IAT requires the rapid categorization of various stimulus objects, such that easier pairings (and faster responses) are interpreted as being more strongly associated in memory than more difficult pairings (slower responses).
-Wikipedia

There're 2 buttons for 2 categories respectively. These categories contain two words. You are to press the buttons to classify pictures or words that appear on the screen as quickly as possible. For instance, you have Thin, Fat, Good and Bad. At one stage, 'Thin' and 'Good' appear in 1 category, and 'Fat' and 'Bad' appear in another. The screen will, say, flash out the image of a thin person or the word 'beautiful'; you are to press the button for the category 'Thin' and 'Good'. Of course, you have the other situation, in which 'Thin' and 'Bad' appear in 1 category, and 'Good' and 'Fat' in the other. The result's supposed to tell you whether you associate 'Fat' with good or bad, and 'Thin' with good or bad. Very interesting, and difficult to lie too, because they record your reaction time, which is largely accurate provided that you don't try to beat the system and do it at your own leisurely pace.

So I tried a few. Turns out that I have preferences which are very very very disturbing, the kind of I-think-I-am-such-but-actually-I-am-not feeling. But of course this is only "implicit", in the subconcious, so I can (and I am), with my rational mind, curbing it and manifesting the belief that I think is right.

So here're the results:
Neutral-->Slight-->moderate-->strong
1. Moderate preference of Asian Americans being American to European being American (erm, because I'm a Chinese and I'm not American)

2. Your data suggest a slight association of Male with Science and Female with Liberal Arts compared to Female with Science and Male with Liberal Arts. (apparently. stereotyping I guess)

3. Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for Young compared to Old. (only a slight. But I've always thought that the old possesses experience and a better moral compass, while the young are energetic, creative and productive, so I was expecting a neutral)

4. Your data suggest little or no association between Female and Male with Career and Family. (now that's surprising. I live with 'traditional' people all my life, so I assumed that I was imbued with stereotypes of male-career, female-family. I guess it's because my mum's working)

Try it yourself at https://implicit.harvard.edu/, and be shocked by how your inner mind works. But don't take it too seriously. As I said, these associations can be controlled by the rational mind from outward manifestations. Besides, you can always change associations. E.g. if you have a preference for whites over blacks, you can watch athletics or basketball or Martin Luther King or Nelson Mendela. This can change your preference fairly drastically.

Of course, all that I've been saying is paraphrased from Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Good book, good examples about what snap judgments are about, pros and cons of it. But too brief about how to make good snap judgments, how one can train oneself to be able to do so.

So if you want to know more, read Blink.

This is not an advertisement. Just a recommendation.

Yes, an implicit advertisement. Watever.

not forever

btw. he's back again. smiling. as if nothing'd happened. Please. Don't do that again.

Exams and post-exams

It’s really over… the other blogs have talked about it, I rather I do not, only to proclaim that I’ve done quite well. And that’s that.

HMT O’ levels was indeed a whirlwind. The compo might have been good, might have been not so good; there is ambiguity for the rest of the paper too. A lack of surety. Uncomfortable. But I guess that’s part of life.
It’s a pity though that most claim that they would not read another Chinese character for the rest of their lives. Admittedly, with English becoming sort of a “lingua-franca” in our world (the Chinese too are learning English in droves, with Earnest), Chinese seems to take a much neglected back seat, especially with the international 海外华侨s (Ethnic Chinese outside of Mainland China). Yet, we must not forget our roots, our ancestry. We need something to connect us, a sense of belonging, a sense of history, love (but not patriotism). Perhaps Chinese can be the connection, a heart-to-heart, truthful connection beyond our appearances and our characteristic idiosyncratic ruthless practicality and money-mindedness.

I still read Chinese. I’ll still read Chinese.

Clichéd. Anyway, the post-O’ level-activities came in avalanches. All hell broke loose. We had a class chalet immediately from wed to sat, when I joined the likes of the China scholars, Georshie, Tanuj etc in Counter Strike LANning. Never played CS before, so it was entirely an exhilarating experience. I was particularly impressed (and slightly worried) for the China scholars—they were amazing with the accuracy in their shots. I had a fair amount of beginner’s luck, managing to gun some down out of the many many more times they managed to do unto me. I’d also successfully squeezed into the Mahjong gang of four several times and played several games with a poking Fong, a complaining Ram and a wide-eyed Renyan. Alright, it wasn’t a gang of four; it was a rotating door policy. But mahjong is mahjong, and we had a good time. We watched shows too. Georshie and I watched ‘big bang theory’, with nerd and not, strung together with wit into a sure-win formula of an American sitcom. The China scholars and I watched Inferno affairs. Zhiyu was ranting about how good how good how good it was, and indeed it was. Wonderful.

Outdoor activities were fun too. Barbeque was good (Fong orchestrated the entire thing wonderfully). Food was relatively good at Changi Village (except that it was too oily; I had diarrhoea). Walk at the seaside was very good. I never knew such sunsets, scenery, breezes could be experienced in Singapore.

Sleeping was good too.

Georshie and I were the only ones who stayed throughout.

1st day: barbeque
2nd day: some came and went. Xbox came and went. Only scholars +3 people stayed.
3rd day: graduation day. Returned at 5 plus. Some came and went. Only Ashish, Conan, Renyan, Joshua, Samuel (from another class) stayed.


So it was rollicking fun.